Term limit win for Chavez

Venezuelans' vote gives momentum to president for 2012

CARACAS, Venezuela — President Hugo Chavez won a major victory Sunday when Venezuelans lifted term limits, permitting him to run for re-election in 2012 and perhaps beyond.

Chavez's measure won 54.3 percent of the vote, according to the national election board. Televised images showed Chavez supporters celebrating while fireworks boomed in the Caracas sky.

"Chavez, friend, the people are with you," the president's adoring supporters, wearing their trademark red T-shirts, chanted outside the presidential palace. Standing on a balcony, Chavez led the festive crowd in singing Venezuela's national anthem.

"It is a clear victory for the people!" an exultant Chavez said. "It is a clear victory for the revolution!"

The result is expected to give fresh impetus to Chavez's decade-long effort to remake Venezuela as a socialist state. It also will fortify his role as the undisputed leader of a resurgent left in Latin America that seeks to check free trade, capitalism and Washington's political and economic reach in the region.

The victory in the national referendum also guarantees continued political tumult in Venezuela and wherever else Chavez injects himself in Latin America. He leads an anti-U.S. bloc that includes Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Honduras.

"Venezuela is in the vanguard of change in Latin America," Chavez said Sunday.

During a heated campaign, opponents had warned that a Chavez triumph would give him virtually unchecked power in Venezuela.

"He is a narcissist who thinks he is the only one who can solve the country's problems. This is false," law professor Henrique Iribarren said after voting Sunday.

Chavez and his allies already control congress, the judiciary, a majority of state governorships and the state oil company, which produces half of the country's wealth and 94 percent of its exports.

Sunday's result gives Chavez political momentum that he lost when Venezuelans defeated his first attempt to scrap term limits in December 2007 and again when opposition candidates were elected governors of the country's three biggest states in November.

Chavez's next move is anyone's guess, although he is expected to devalue Venezuela's currency as a way of increasing the value of oil exports and increasing the cost of imports. Economists warn that the sudden drop in oil prices will mark 2009 as the end of several years of rapid growth.

Polls by Datanalisis, a Caracas-based survey firm, showed that Chavez made up a 17-point deficit in the campaign's final six weeks.

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In Bolivia, a fierce debate

Is the country better off with nationalistic leader? chicago tribune.com/bolivians